


In Saraseil

by joyfulseeker



Category: Cloud Roads - Martha Wells
Genre: M/M, Mental Coercion, Non Consensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:10:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyfulseeker/pseuds/joyfulseeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You knew me in Saraseil."</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Saraseil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Measured_Words](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/gifts).



Moon was coming back from the market the first time he saw one. He had gone to trade a few of the carved bone markers he'd earned hauling cargo for a bag of fruit, but he smelled something off on the wind, something rotten that said maybe he didn't want to buy anything today. He turned and headed back to his rented room in the transients' quarter. Halfway there, something large flew overhead and he ducked down. It had been a while since something came down from the sky and tried to eat him, but his instincts were still strong. The city was experiencing its first day of beautiful weather after weeks of rain, and the street was packed with people from all across the gulf of Abascene. Usually Moon couldn't even hear himself think, but everyone stopped talking, almost all at once. A whisper ran through the crowd. Moon heard someone say, "Fell," which didn't make any sense, because if there were Fell around, why wasn't anyone running?

He edged back toward the end of the street. The thing flying overhead, the Fell, turned in a lazy circle and Moon stopped where he was, sandwiched between a well-dressed Saraseil matron and her three offspring. The Fell was dark, maybe black, large wings and tail and four limbs, and it moved like Moon did in the air. It landed after one more graceful turn and it was close enough that Moon could see the way the light shivered off its black scales. It folded its wings and shifted, so fast Moon couldn't see the change at this distance. A male in groundling form stood in its place with pale skin and dark hair. Moon felt hot, the skin across his back shivering with the urge to change. That smell was back, stronger now. The Saraseil matron was shuffling her children away, and everyone smelled afraid, but the Fell just looked around calmly. He was beautiful.

Who are you? Moon wanted to ask. He'd never seen any of the Fell before. For a while he'd thought they were monsters the groundling races had made up to explain their fear of anyone different. Nobody had ever said they were shifters who flew.

Moon moved away before he could attract the Fell's attention as the only person above the age of ten turns still staring at him. Behind him, he heard two more creatures land. He looked over his shoulder as he turned the corner. Three of them stood clustered together, identical, and he couldn't tell which one had landed first.

Over the next few days he heard the Fell mentioned again and again. The merchant he worked for, hauling cargo in her warehouse, had him load up her most valuable goods into a wagon. She then told him to find somewhere else to work or leave, because Saraseil's council of lords had doomed them all and she and her family were heading to the other side of the gulf where people were smarter.

He stacked wheels of cheese on top of a heavy chest, then shifted a few boxes of stoppered glass bottles. "I've never seen them before," Moon said.

"Well, you're seeing their prettiest face," Mari said. "Or so I've heard. The rulers like to play with their food before they eat it. The dakti and the kethel just eat."

Moon swallowed. He didn't think he'd ever eaten something that hadn't tried to eat him first, but he didn't know if that counted as playing. He'd never wanted to eat Mari, that was certain.

"I've been seeing them flying in and out of the citadel," Moon said.

Mari snorted, eloquently, and walked away shaking her head. That evening Moon climbed out his window and up the side of building to the roof. Lights were going on in buildings all over the city, fewer in the lower tiers of the poorer areas and the flat floodplain of transients' quarter, more as the city climbed up tiers in the cliff-face to culminate in the brilliantly-illuminated citadel at Saraseil's heart. Moon could see the rulers flying around the citadel in the dusk, darting shadows that looped in wider and wider circles. Moon missed flying. Saraseil was too crowded to risk shifting and he'd been in the city for almost a season. He shivered, neck and shoulders fraying into spines and scales for a second before he controlled himself. The entire city was beginning to smell like the Fell now, heavy and musky, almost like blood or bad water. It didn't seem right that he wouldn't like how his own people smelled, but he didn't. Maybe he'd been among groundlings for too long. His memory of his own family had faded enough that he couldn't remember what his mother had smelled like, except sadness.

He remembered the way the three rulers had stood together, united. Not alone.

Moon woke up when the outer wall came down, a cataclysmic booming like being in the middle of a thunderstorm, followed by a woman screaming in the hall outside his room. He ran to the window and looked out, but he couldn't see anything for a long time. Then a dark shape, larger than the rulers, came down from the sky and rammed through the roof of a home across the street. People spilled out of buildings as alarm-calls went up, and then another winged Fell came down, then another, some smaller, some larger, all of them ripping through anything in their path. They were eating people, Moon saw with mounting horror. The smell of death and Fell mingled together. Moon felt his gorge rise and when he saw one of the major Fell biting through the stomach of a Mirani man, he vomited up everything he'd eaten for dinner and fell back from the window. All the Fell had dark scales and wings, some with horns, others with heavy armored shoulder-plates.

Moon fled to the roof, then he fled the transients' quarter altogether, making for higher ground. The Fell were everywhere, destroying everything. A family with two young children ran down the street, chased by two smaller Fell. Moon shifted and leapt at them, growling low in his throat. When he'd killed them with his claws, he turned around, only to find that the family had been ambushed by another Fell and had died anyway. He launched himself into the air, choking on the smell of the dead and dying. Saraseil was falling. Saraseil was burning. The fountains in the square where he bought his water had been smashed and were gushing water into the wreckage. Mari's warehouse was in flames. The largest city he'd ever seen, turning to rubble before his eyes. One of the major Fell came at him from below, but it was large and slow, or maybe didn't expect Moon to be so fast. He bit down on its shoulder and disemboweled it before it could do more than bite at his neck. He realized he'd killed it only after it was already falling. Its blood was acrid in his mouth.

He flew to the citadel, still ablaze with light. The destruction was worse at the higher levels of the city, like the Fell had started there. Fine houses he'd only seen from the street had been burrowed into like vermin searching for bugs in a log. He circled the citadel. All the windows were broken. On one of the balconies, a table had been upended. He could see someone's leg sticking out from underneath the fallen furniture.

He made his way into the citadel almost without thinking about it, driven by an instinct that told him that if the dakti and kethel were only mindless appetites, he needed to find the Fell that played with their food. He needed to find a ruler, otherwise he'd never know what he was.

One of the smaller Fell caught him wandering the halls. It snarled and went for his throat, and Moon prepared to fight, only then realizing he might end up dead in a Fell's stomach before he even got to ask someone with a brain if he belonged to them. He should have realized sooner, he thought, but even that thought was like trying to walk through thick brush. He kept catching on sharp edges in his head, tripping into someplace else. The Fell had stopped snarling. Something else was looking through its eyes. It looked hungry, still, but in a different way.

"You're lost," it said, and its voice was sweet. Up close, Moon could see all the ways it differed from him. Its wings were jointed and webbed instead of scaled, its facial features larger and heavily fanged. Moon couldn't tell if it was male or female, and that stench of blood and rotting water was back.

"Come with me," it said. Moon went.

They went into a large room at the top of the citadel, ringed with balconies looking over the city. It was lit with fine lamps and was lushly carpeted. A man--the ruler--sat at a side table where he could look out at the city. There were other Fell in the room, more of the smaller ones curled up in corners and against the walls. Every once in a while one would shift and Moon would see a flash of wing or hear the rasp of scale against scale. The man was the only Fell in groundling form.

He turned his head and Moon saw that his eyes were deeply blue in his fine-featured, pale face. He smiled, and his eyes turned warm. "Hello, my lost boy," he said, his voice a soft song, "I'm Liheas," and Moon fell back into his groundling form before he'd consciously decided to shift. The man's smile gentled even further and Moon flushed hotly all over his body. He felt small, weak, young, surrounded.

"What am I?" he whispered.

"Oh, my love," Liheas said. "You're one of us." Something like triumph gleamed in those blue eyes. "You've come home," he said, but the room stank of death and dying and fear and hunger and Moon knew he was lying. Liheas knew what he was, though, and wanted him.

"I," Moon said, and Liheas stood and hushed him.

"I know," Liheas said. He reached out and stroked Moon's cheek. Moon swayed back, and one of the Fell behind him stirred. "You're so beautiful," Liheas said, still cupping Moon's face. "Perfect." He hadn't looked away from Moon once. That hunger Moon had seen in the other Fell was back, like Liheas wanted everything about him. More of the Fell were moving now, a low hum rising, prickling the skin between Moon's shoulderblades. He wanted to run and knew he couldn't, and like tripping on another unexpected branch, he realized how stupid he had been. He'd wanted to know what he was, and instead he'd only learned something else he was not. He didn't know why Liheas, with his mesmerizing beauty and horrifying hunger, thought Moon was perfect.

Liheas said, "Come with me, please?" He reached down and took Moon's hand, still tacky with Fell blood. Liheas didn't seem to mind. Moon wanted to live, suddenly and fiercely, and he didn't know how to appease Liheas's hunger and survive.

Moon's thoughts stuttered again and they were walking down another hallway, alone.

"I'm so glad you came to me," Liheas said. "We've been looking for you."

"Where did you look?" Moon forced himself to ask.

"Everywhere," Liheas said, and despite himself Moon felt his heart leap. He'd dreamed of being found by his people. With the Fell, at least Moon would be able to shift and to fly. Until they ate him. Moon's throat went dry as dust and still Liheas held his hand. They were both in groundling form, both soft and vulnerable. Moon had left his knife behind in his panic, but he was strong in this form, still.

Liheas led him to another room. It had been beautiful before the Fell had ripped it apart, a private bedroom with a well-cushioned bed, polished wood floors and another balcony that overlooked the burning harbor. Now it smelled like the dead woman lying in the corner, like smoke, and like Fell.

"I love this city," Liheas said, and drew Moon across the room and out onto the balcony. "Look at how beautiful it is. I love it best now. I want to show you everything in the Three Worlds that's as beautiful as this."

Moon felt tears biting his throat and twisting his mouth, so young and stupid, but Liheas made a soothing sound and kissed him until his trembling stopped.

Liheas was doing something, Moon realized. Moon had to work to look away from him, and he wanted to get closer, wanted to press their bodies together, skin to skin. He wanted Liheas to let him go, but he also wanted Liheas to never stop looking at him with that warm, possessive light in his eyes, like Moon was everything he'd ever wanted. Liheas was making Moon want him, and, oh, Moon did want him.

Liheas said, "Do you believe that I love you?" and Moon said, "yes," because he did.

"Good," Liheas said. "I will keep you forever. You'll never be alone again." Lying again, lying because of how alone Moon still felt, but when Liheas urged him closer, Moon followed him for the feel of Liheas's skin against his. Liheas kissed him again and smoothed his hands down Moon's back and Moon shivered against him.

"Please," Moon mouthed against Liheas's flawless cheek, and let Liheas turn him around so he faced the burning city, bracketed by Liheas's body against his back and the balcony rail pressing into his stomach.

His mind tripped again and he was naked and staring down at broken ships docked and rocking in the water. Liheas had him in a firm grip, moving against him, no, they were moving together, no, the world was moving and he was a fixed point, no, he was writhing as Liheas made him come and he tried to get away, no, Liheas loved him and he was trying to get closer, no.

Liheas took him on the balcony, whispering words of love as he did, and Moon believed him.

Later, Moon took Liheas's head in his hands as Liheas lay asleep on the ruined bed. His beautiful eyes were closed, the lashes dark delicate shadows against his cheeks. He looked innocent and like someone Moon could love. Moon knew the taste of his skin and the touch of his hands. But Moon was stronger and meaner than Liheas knew, and Moon wanted to live.

Breaking a neck wasn't hard when you knew how. Moon started a fire before he left, because Liheas had found them so beautiful. The shredded bedding went up like tinder.


End file.
